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Sunday, 20 April 2014

My trip to Camp Nou (2)

Arriving in Barcelona on Saturday lunchtime, I had just
enough time to find my way to the hotel, check-in, dump my bags, have some
lunch and jump on the metro to the Nou Camp. I was off to see Barcelona’s La
Liga encounter with Real Betis. I love the Spanish metro system – it’s so much
cleaner and easier to navigate than the London underground; it’s nowhere near
as cramped either, even in peak times and the people seem a lot less
intimidating. After getting off at Badal, which ended up being a last minute
decision, after seeing a number of fans getting off, it was a five minute walk
to the ground.

On arrival, the sheer magnitude of the place was
astounding, and while from the outside, it didn’t look the most attractive of
structures, once inside I was in awe. Luckily the gate I wanted was at the
front of the stadium – I can’t begin to imagine the walk, if you were sitting
in the north end. Sitting in ‘Gol Sud’ (the south end behind the goal – and the
end with the Nike swoosh in the seats)and
on the second tier, the view was incredible. Although I was miles away from the
pitch, it didn’t feel as far away and the panoramas were great. On reflection,
I had a good seat and would have rather sat behind the goal, than round the
sides.

I loved how the away fans weren’t segregated and despite
this, there was no trouble at all – although there were a group of 30 or so ‘die
hards’ who were positioned in the top tier, sectioned off by mesh. They weren’t
doing any harm though, just jumping around for 90 minutes and waving flags erratically.

On the whole, I wasn’t that impressed with Barcelona and
it’s clear the team are a shadow of their former selves. While they dominated
possession, playingtheir typical
passing game, so many of the passes were misplaced or mistimed, while they
insisted on trying to walk it into the net – had more shots gone in from
distance, I’m sure the margin of victory would have been greater. Busquets was
the stand-out player for me, while Neymar who in my opinion is overrated, also
played well. Most of all I was just pleased to see Messi live and he didn’t
disappoint – even if his penalty miss wasn’t great,

I’m not sure what I was expecting atmosphere-wise, but
from where I was sitting, it wasn’t that great. With over 80,000 in the
stadium, there was a lot of impatience and it was fairly quiet with all the
noise coming from the opposite end. At the point where it was 1-0, a number of Mexican
waves took place to my right – summing up how dull the game was.

When you’re used to paying £20 for a ticket, close to £70
is very steep but I had a good evening and it was amazing to see world-class
players in action.